Owners have refs pinned / Even voice of reason Rooney doesn't see an end in sight

Ira Miller

Published 4:00 am, Sunday, September 9, 2001

Right about now, as they sit home watching opening-day games on television, NFL game officials know how the folks felt in Grenada when George W. Bush's daddy sent in the troops.

Maybe even worse. The Marines don't fight any tougher than the powers that run the NFL. Especially when they sense a chance at a rare "victory."

Of course, this will turn out to be something of a Pyrrhic victory, because it's inevitable the scab zebras will screw up at some point even worse than the regular officials, and become a disaster for the league.

But until it happens, it's hard to explain that to a bunch of people as rich as the fraternity of NFL owners, a group that doesn't like being threatened or dictated to, likes unions even less, and is feeling unusually smug after beating Al Davis in court.

The locked-out officials wanted to make up for years of neglect in one contract, and that wasn't going to happen. The NFL's reaction is no surprise; this is, after all, the league that thought it OK to play games without the players in 1987. The NFL certainly wasn't going to be stopped by a lack of qualified officials.

Further, the owners worry about the trickle-down effect cutting into their huge profits. They know that if they give in to the officials, they'll have other employees at their doors -- especially the underpaid and overworked assistant coaches, who were threatening a class-action lawsuit little more than a year ago. The 470 NFL assistant coaches average just more than $200,000 a year, which is minimum salary for a rookie player.

"That's a common theme throughout all their negotiations with any of us, except the players," said Larry Kennan, executive director of the NFL Coaches Association. "Sure, they know that if they give the officials something real good, then it's going to arouse our guys."

The club owners appear to be quite unified in this dispute. Even Pittsburgh's Dan Rooney, usually a voice of moderation, doesn't see an end in sight.

"I think what really happened was the amount they asked for," he said. "You're not dealing with John Elway or Terry Bradshaw. I just think they overstepped. Why they made that mistake, I don't know."

Maybe it wasn't a mistake. After all, the locked-out officials know how management thinks because that's what they are. They may belong to a union as an NFL game official, but in their other lives they are lawyers, educators, administrators, CEOs. They are management in real life, and, if they were on the other side of this dispute, they'd be acting just like the owners are.

They even rejected the idea of help from organized labor, because referee Ed Hochuli, their union president, says, "We don't feel that is consistent with (our) image."

This week, the locked-out officials suggested binding arbitration, because that, Hochuli said, was "fair." And the league laughed off that idea, then yesterday reduced its offer. The NFL has control now. Fair is not the issue. The NFL even has succeeded in muzzling complaints from coaches, getting the owners to tell them to keep quiet. No way is the NFL going to give control to an arbitrator.

So just who are these scabs we'll see today? That's an amusing question. The NFL's public-relations machine, which used to love to tell us how accurate their officials were and how prominent they were in their other jobs, won't give us word one. A roster obtained by The Chronicle shows at least 14 of the scab zebras were fired by their college conferences, one for bad eyesight; that many were only high-school officials or had "minimal Division III experience;" and that at least four have had heart problems, including two with pacemakers installed. Less than half had major college experience.

Suddenly, they're all good enough and healthy enough for the NFL.

Not that we should feel sorry for the regular officials. In fact, that's what makes this such a weird dispute. They all have income from their other jobs. They're not starving. The owners surely aren't starving. Only the game will be hurt, but we just don't know when or where it will happen.

Pro football is the toughest sport to officiate, and its officials work under the closest scrutiny in sports. It's ridiculous that pro football officials are paid so much less than officials in other sports. But right now, owners have the leverage, and that's why we will have scabs in striped shirts on the field today.

Baptism of fire

Two rookie quarterbacks will start in season openers. But unlike the recent past, where opening-day QBs included such rookies as Peyton Manning, these are not exactly your highly touted young professional stars.

Dallas' Quincy Carter was a second-round pick, No. 53 overall in the draft. His specialty is running the option, which many believe is an invitation to disaster against quick NFL defenses. Carolina's Chris Weinke, the Heisman Trophy winner, was No. 106 overall. He played six years of minor-league baseball, so he's trying to start a career at age 29.

History says these fellows, both joining lousy teams, will struggle big- time; it was hard enough for Manning (3-13) and Troy Aikman (0-11) as a rookie,

and they were overall No. 1 picks.

The last two quarterbacks to start their first game as a rookie after being drafted later than the first round were Detroit's Jeff Komlo (ninth round) in 1979 and Baltimore's Mike Pagel (fourth round) in 1982. Their combined rookie record: 2-22-1.

Although five quarterbacks were drafted on the first round in 1999 and one in 2000, the last rookies to open a season as a starter were Manning and Ryan Leaf, the first two players drafted, in 1998. One of them turned out OK.

Team of destiny

The most magical season in 49ers' history began quietly 20 years ago this weekend without a hint, a 24-17 defeat at Detroit. Four months later, the 49ers were back in Detroit to win the Super Bowl and, by then, Joe Montana was a national figure, Dwight Clark was a hero and Bill Walsh was a genius.

Clark, who caught the most famous touchdown pass in team history, says he still gets more than a dozen requests a week for autographed pictures of "The Catch" that won the NFC Championship Game against Dallas.

He keeps a stack of front-page magazine reproductions in his office desk in Cleveland, where he works for the Browns. He says it's "amazing" that, to this day, fans are excited by that play, but he believes the 49ers wound have won even if he hadn't made his catch -- which occurred on a third-down play.

"I think . . . it was a team of destiny," he says. "We would have scored the next play, one way or another. We would have won that game. A Lenvil Elliott sweep would have scored, and maybe everybody would remember Lenvil Elliott now. Who cares? We would have won, and won the Super Bowl. I just think that team was destined to win it all, no matter who made what."